Peter Parker didn't believe in charging in blind. Now that he had the Elementals' dossiers—real names, baseline power sets, and biological compositions—he was going full Batman. Prep time was half the battle.
These guys weren't street-level thugs. Sandman and Hydro-Man were functionally immortal. As long as Flint Marko had dirt and Morris Bench had a puddle, they could regenerate indefinitely.
Plus, he still needed to reverse-engineer the spider-sense suppression tech the AI Green Goblin had deployed during the recent blackout. Two birds, one insanely complicated stone.
The next afternoon, Peter swung into the Web. Dr. Jonathan Drew was already there, meticulously logging data in the arachnid containment sector.
"Afternoon, Doc," Peter called out, dropping his backpack onto a stainless-steel workbench. "Hey, quick question. Weren't you and Dr. Connors collaborating on an antidote for the Green Goblin serum?"
Jonathan adjusted his glasses, pausing his typing. "We are. We're trying to flush the Goblin enhancements out of Phil Urich's system. The initial plan was to adapt Connors's reptilian gene-editing protocols, but we hit a wall. We don't have Urich's baseline DNA."
Gene-reversal therapy was a nightmare of a jigsaw puzzle. You needed the original box art—the unmutated genetic sequence—to put the pieces back together. Without pre-exposure samples for Urich, Hamilton, and the rest of the recovered Goblin army cyborgs, Oscorp's equipment was just guessing in the dark.
"Connors is running point on the synthesis," Jonathan added, gesturing to the terrariums. "I'm tweaking our arachnid specimens. If I can increase their genetic plasticity, we might be able to bridge the gaps in the human DNA sequences without needing a perfect match."
Peter leaned against the glass. He knew the spider totem was pure, unadulterated metaphysics—a Web of Fate connecting dimensions. He had mentioned it to Jonathan once. The doctor had simply smiled. If it couldn't go under a microscope, Jonathan didn't buy it.
Peter pushed off the glass and fired up his main terminal. It was time to design some new threads. Nick Fury's paranoid obsession with the 'Night Monkey' identity-concealment angle was completely pointless. Hydra already knew exactly who Peter Parker was. They would track his flight to Europe before the plane even hit cruising altitude.
Throw Felicia Hardy into the mix, and the whole operation reeked of classic Fury misdirection. Peter was the bait. S.H.I.E.L.D. wanted Spider-Man to draw Hydra's attention and brawl with the Weapon Plus Elementals, leaving Fury's invisible hands free to run shadow ops across the continent.
"Bottom line," Peter muttered, tapping his keyboard. "Spider-Man doesn't need a disguise. I need actual stealth."
His invisibility was great, but it didn't mask his thermal signature. Even Venom couldn't hide ambient body heat.
He pulled up the blueprints for his Velocity Suit. He stripped away the heavy plating, paring the silhouette down to a sleek, frictionless black mesh. He layered in aerogel micro-fibers designed to trap and recycle thermal radiation. To cap it off, he wired a high-intensity, strobe-burst emblem into the chest. A sudden flashbang in pitch darkness was a great way to give mercenaries a heart attack.
Satisfied, he routed the file to the 3D fabricator. He would print two copies—one to stash in the base, one to pack in his carry-on.
Time for counter-measures.
"Marko and Raxton are the straightforward ones," Peter reasoned aloud, pulling up their files. "Sandman is just silica. Apply enough extreme heat, and he turns to glass."
His bio-electric blasts burned hot enough to do the job, but he'd need raw, sustained output to vitrify a guy that big. He needed an amplifier.
His first instinct was the Iron Spider armor. Unfortunately, he had reduced that particular billion-dollar masterpiece to glowing slag during the Green Goblin fight. Tony hadn't built a replacement yet, mostly because Tony was furious. Peter had a bad habit of treating the Iron Spider suits like highly-priced suicide vests, strapping them to villains and initiating the self-destruct protocols. Mr. Stark had words about that. Loud words.
"What if I just build the waldo-arms?" Peter mused, scratching his chin. "A standalone mechanical claw backpack. Like Earth-65 Cindy."
Then it hit him.
"Wait. The Avengers secured the data from Otto Octavius's harness."
If Peter could strip the neural-interface code and externalize the control systems, he could build his own set of cybernetic arms. If he wired the claws to act as bio-electric capacitors, he could channel his voltage straight through the metal. Sandman wouldn't stand a chance.
Molten Man was next. Raxton wasn't pure fire; he was living liquid metal. Slag. Drop his core temperature fast enough, and he'd solidify into a very heavy lawn ornament. Bobby Drake—the X-Men's Iceman—would be the perfect wingman, but dragging a mutant to Europe on a high school field trip was a logistical nightmare. Instead, Peter made a mental note to call Norman Osborn for some military-grade cryogenic grenades. Preferably ones that weren't shaped like pumpkins.
That left Hydro-Man and Whirlwind.
Bench was a logistical headache. Hydra wouldn't be dumb enough to deploy a water-assassin in the Sahara. They'd hit a coastal city. The idea of fighting Hydro-Man in the canals of Venice made Peter's temples throb. He needed to analyze Bench's actual cellular composition before he could formulate a localized desiccant.
And David Cannon. In the old comic files Peter remembered, Whirlwind was just a mutant who spun really fast. Now? Weapon Plus had turned him into a sentient Category 5 hurricane. Peter had a few aerodynamic theories on how to collapse a vortex, but he needed to feel the wind shear in person to know for sure.
Peter leaned back in his chair. His phone buzzed in his pocket. It was an encrypted Avengers thread.
He stared at the screen. The team desperately needed to have a sit-down about Ultron. Hank Pym had pushed the Version 2 upgrade at the Raft, citing a terrifying justification: Kang let me witness the future.
Peter didn't trust Kang the Conqueror as far as he could throw him, and the rest of the roster felt the same. But the code was already compiled. The upgrade was active. Dealing with a hyper-intelligent, closed-loop Ultron was rapidly moving to the top of the Avengers' to-do list.
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